


submerged in water, unclear

by icarusandtheson



Series: encore [3]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Gen, Mentions of George Washington - Freeform, Minor Alexander Hamilton/Elizabeth "Eliza" Schuyler, Unresolved Emotional Tension, mentions of Rachel Faucette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 15:26:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13193001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarusandtheson/pseuds/icarusandtheson
Summary: After a night out with the Schuyler Sisters, Alex struggles to balance his work and personal life, and ignores other significant issues in the process.





	submerged in water, unclear

**Author's Note:**

> For Hobbes, who beta'ed and has been wanting an Alex/Eliza fic in this 'verse since its inception. 
> 
> Reading the first installment in this series may help in understanding Alex's characterization, but either can be understood without the other.

Soft humming and rustling clothes, the smell of faded perfume and sweat. The melody isn’t right, and the perfume isn’t that familiar cheap scent, but with his eyes closed, Alex can almost imagine he’s somewhere else, a different place and time. The soft clinking of half-empty bottles being snatched up and relinquished wherever there’s space, a dented tube of lipstick rolling across the tiny vanity and catching on the lip of the sink. The light bulb that never got replaced, and the dark splotch it always left overhead.  

“Alexander?”

His heart lurches into his mouth, just for a moment, and a decade of time unravels.  

“Alex?”

He shifts against the bathroom doorway, opening his eyes and squinting against the brightness. A lurch of stomach-dropping dizziness, at finding himself in a room more than twice the size of his memory. A neat pile of bobby pins beside the sink, jars and bottles organized precisely on a flawless white surface. Eliza stares at him with fond concern, tugging her hair into a lopsided bun. He blinks slowly, swallowing down the strange ache in his throat.

“Sorry.”

“You don’t have to keep me company if you’re tired.”

“I’m fine.”

His head is swimming, but not unpleasantly, and as he comes back to himself, the grief dissolves into a dull throb. He drank too much, probably, can barely remember the cab ride over to Eliza’s apartment, everything blurred and poorly lit in his memory -- laughter, decent booze because he’s not a broke college kid anymore and the Schuylers are _rich,_ dancing with Eliza, then Angelica, Eliza again… _fuck_ , he missed dancing. Hasn’t had a chance since he started work, hasn’t gone out much, period. His feet ache a little, and he can feel sweat gathered and drying underneath his collar, can smell it on his skin -- good, familiar things, as much like home as he can hope for.

“It was a good night.”

Eliza smiles, wide and impossibly bright despite her tired eyes. “I told you that you’d have fun,” she says, but the relief on her face is clear, even as she turns her attention back to the sink. “Maybe we can do it again soon?”

He keeps his expression carefully blank, or tries to. _Soon_ sets off warning bells, even under layers of alcohol and exhaustion. _Soon_ swallows _maybe_ whole, bones and all, and sets calendar dates. _Soon_ is a trap door that will inevitably lead to late-night texts cancelling last-minute because something came up, something _always_ comes up, and then Alex feels like an asshole for not saying no _. No_ to more time at the office, _no_ to expanding on or totally restructuring someone else’s work because it wasn’t what Washington _needed, no_ to Washington’s addictive faith that Alex can make it happen, always, because he’s _special_ , he’s worth taking a chance on.

“Maybe,” Alex allows, because he can’t say no to her, either, at least not until he has to. He doesn’t _want_ to, never wants to hurt her. Eliza’s smile grows, like _maybe_ means _soon_ even though both of them amount to the same sidestepped rejection.

Alex watches her reflection, some unnameable emotion scratching at his throat. She’s practically glowing, her face flushed -- probably at least in part from trying to match Angelica drink for drink, which she managed admirably -- and the happiness radiating off of her is almost tangible. Alex wants to reach for it, to take a little for himself. He doesn’t feel _bad,_ necessarily, but it’s like looking through a drinking glass, everything obscured and a little warped, unreachable. Drinking cut through it, up to a point, but he still can’t grasp it the way he wants to.

He shifts his weight forward, bracing himself against the door as a rush of dizziness overtakes him, more unsteady on his feet than he expected to be. Eliza glances over at the movement, her smile lingering, expectant. She sidesteps the vanity, reaching out to steady him.

A sliver of memory. Eliza stumbling into him, unsteady on her heels and tipsy-sweet, Angelica laughing and nudging them both back onto the sidewalk. He carried Eliza’s heels for her, fingers slipping against the straps as the cold numbed them, can’t remember where he put the damned things...

Her hand is cool when he takes it, tangling their fingers together and pulling her forward, a reverberation in his muscles, reminded of their earlier dances. She huffs in soft surprise as he wraps his arms around her, bracing up under his weight as he leans on her more heavily.

“Hi,” she says, soft and fond. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

She’s a little shorter than him like this -- she had an inch on him in heels and it delighted her endlessly -- but he can still rest his head on her shoulder, breathe in the lingering scent of lavender in her hair. He leans into her, huffs a quiet laugh as she sways, gently moving them both. Alex’s eyes slide shut, his brain registering only the purely sensory. The warmth of another body against his. Stray wisps of Eliza’s hair brushing his cheek as she shifts to rest her head against his.

“How much did you have tonight?” she asks, something genuine under the laugh in her voice.

There’s a gap where that answer should be, in his brain and in the air between them. Eliza doesn’t press him, but he can feel her cheek twitch as her mouth shapes into something he can only imagine is a frown. He searches liquid-slow thoughts for an answer that will ease her mind, but there’s nothing, no words pressing against his skull, trapped and desperate and clawing, his usual excuses disintegrated along with his earlier worries.

Calculating how late he could stay up tomorrow to make up for this night out, the twitch in his fingers to check his phone every five minutes, the exhausted look on Washington’s face when Alex left work earlier today… all dissolved, like salt in the ocean. He can taste them, feel them, if he tries, but he doesn’t have to look at them, doesn’t have to _talk about them._

Eliza shifts in his arms, and he releases her -- he’s been holding her for too long, clinging to her tight, and shame rises up in his chest, distant but hot -- just as she leans in to press an off-center kiss to his cheek, clumsy and warm, berry-scented and slightly sticky. It brings up something, a flash of sensory memory, and his stomach lurches, the last burning shot he took before the cab rising up in his throat. He does and doesn’t want her to let go, feels steadier inside when she pulls away completely. She stares at him for a moment, something soft and genuine in her eyes that he balks at naming. She reaches up to rub her thumb across his cheek, the touch unexpected but not unwelcome.

“I left a smudge,” she explains, a little sheepish. She pulls her hand back, thumb smudged pink. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

He nods slowly, and a moment stretches between them, awkward and heavy. She turns back to the sink.

Belatedly, Alex wonders if he should have kissed her.

Eliza’s expression is unreadable, eyes obscured as she glances down. She reaches distractedly for a bottle on the vanity, misses. She knocks against her perfectly organized display and scatters it, the sound overwhelmingly loud. She swears under her breath, grabbing at the casualties. They both grimace at the sharp sound of containers hitting the tile floor as a few escape her grip.

“I got it.” Alex crouches down, steadying himself with a hand against the sink, passing her a stray tube of mascara, a couple nondescript bottles with writing so stylized and tiny his eyes ache just at a glance, some tubes of lip gloss. The last of them glints in the light as he picks it up. It’s a striking shade of bright red, flecked with something gold and glittering.

Eliza huffs a laugh, fond and exasperated. “Peggy got it for me.” As the silence extends, she adds, “It’s a little much -- I think she just wanted to use it when she came over.”

Alex turns it over in his hand, sleek and clear and so unlike the little dented tube he’s imagining in its place, that he can practically _see_ if he just looks hard enough -- gold paint peeling off the sides, probably a fraction of the price of anything in this bathroom, a deep dark red, or another of the bold colors his mother favored. He can see it so perfectly, can feel the waxy texture of it on his forehead after a kiss, and he wants -- that’s the end of the thought, and he blinks slowly down at the gloss, his mind liquid again.

Eliza is watching him curiously, something strikingly close to understanding on her face, and that’s not right, that doesn’t make _sense_ when he doesn’t even understand why the hell he’s remembering --

Her lips part, a quick little intake of breath pulled through her teeth, and Alex is suddenly, _viscerally_ certain he doesn’t want to hear what she’s going to say next. He straightens quick enough to make his head spin, pushes the lip gloss into her hand a little more urgently than necessary. The memories fade, or at least become less insistent. “Here.”

“Thanks.” Eliza smiles, gentle and reassuring, but there’s a glint in her eye that reminds him unsettlingly of Angelica. Not unkind, never that, but knowing. Too discerning, too clear-eyed to fall for his bullshit. She looks away as she finishes removing her makeup, spares him the scrutiny while he learns to breathe around the sudden tightness in his chest.

He needs sleep. He needs to purge the alcohol from his system so his words flow back. He needs to be anywhere but here, now.

He’s afraid to close his eyes, afraid to let his mind wander. He focuses on little things, innocuous. Eliza removing her earrings, scrubbing away the last of her mascara, smudged dark under her eyes like sleeplessness. They match, for a moment, the shadows under their eyes, and he almost says it, but he can’t find a way to make it more joke than self-deprecation. Then they’re gone, wiped away with precise, practised ease, insomnia and late nights soaked away and neatly disposed of into the trash. He wishes it were that easy, and closes his teeth around that thought, too sharp to be funny, to do anything but cut his mouth.   

She looks younger, when she’s finished. Bare, rosy skin, round cheeks and bright eyes. She looks like she did the first time they met. There’s too many discrepancies for the comparison to make sense -- her faded T-shirt and pajama shorts versus the gown he met her in, stained-glass blue and delicate, the soft glow of glass-gold chandeliers on her skin versus bathroom light bulbs. But her face -- young and bright and _hopeful._ Happy. It hasn’t been long at all, but she hasn’t looked young like this, since that night. His heart aches, unplaceable but insistent.    

“I think I need water,” Eliza says, turning the faucet off. “Do you want some?” She sounds so much more sober than he feels, but if this is pity, he’ll take it gladly.

“Yeah.” Anything to get rid of this sudden, sour taste in his mouth. He follows her out of the bathroom, blinking as his eyes adjust to the relative darkness of the rest of her apartment. The television murmurs over in the living room, warm white noise. Otherwise, the only sound is Eliza’s quiet movement as she switches on the kitchen lights and searches for glasses. He can’t hear any voices -- if he’s lucky, her sisters will have fallen asleep, he can find a way home and sleep off whatever this is.

He murmurs a thank-you as Eliza passes him a filled glass. He gulps it down and immediately refills, temples throbbing.

His mouth leaves a cloudy, colorless imprint on the rim.

 

**Author's Note:**

> * I purposefully left the details of Alex and Eliza's relationship unclear, so it's up to the reader to fill in the details there.
> 
> *This story follows the first installment of the series roughly a decade later, with Alex already living in New York.
> 
> *I'm on Tumblr at [icarusandtheson](https://icarusandtheson.tumblr.com/), come say hi!


End file.
